Morton, 71, penned pop hits, produced top acts

By MARGALIT FOX The New York TimesPublished February 17, 2013 - 12:00am Last Updated February 17, 2013 - 12:01am

Shadow Morton, a songwriter and producer who for a brief, luminous period in the 1960s poured the discontents of adolescence into original hit songs, including Leader of the Pack and Remember (Walking in the Sand), died Thursday in Laguna Beach, Calif. He was 71.

The cause was cancer, said Amy Krakow, a family friend.

By all accounts possessed of a brazen, naive genius — he played no instrument, could not read music and wrote his songs in his head — Morton was almost single-handedly responsible for the wild success of the Shangri-Las, the New York girl group he introduced and propelled to international stardom.

The group had its first hit in 1964 with Remember, recorded more or less on a dare in a session frantically pulled together by Morton, who had never written a song before.

The result, with lyrics and music conceived by Morton in what he later said was about 22 minutes, was released on the Red Bird label and reached No. 5 on the Billboard singles chart.

A song of lost love, Remember was imbued with the lush, infectious strangeness that would prove a hallmark of Morton’s other hits. It employed a narrative, quasi-operatic plot, spoken dialogue, chanting, unconventional sound effects (in this case sea gulls) and lyrics that encapsulated all the ardour and angst of the teenage years.

The song was followed later that year by Leader of the Pack, written with Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry.

The song, which reached No. 1, has been covered by artists as diverse as Bette Midler, Twisted Sister and Alvin and the Chipmunks; it remains omnipresent in movies and on television.

Morton also wrote Give Him a Great Big Kiss and I Can Never Go Home Anymore, which became hits for the Shangri-Las in 1965. But in the years that followed, he largely abandoned his songwriting career, partly because he cared little for the music business and partly, he later said in interviews, because of the rigours of battling alcoholism.

The nickname Shadow was bestowed on him by a Brill Building colleague to describe his habitually evanescent presence.

As a producer, Morton was best known for Janis Ian’s hit single Society’s Child, recorded in 1965 when she was 14; several albums by the psychedelic rock group Vanilla Fudge; and Too Much Too Soon (1974), by the protopunk New York Dolls.

George Francis Morton was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 3, 1941. When he was about 14, his family moved to Hicksville, on Long Island, which his parents thought would provide a wholesome atmosphere.

Morton’s marriage to Lois Berman ended in divorce. His survivors include three daughters, Stacey Morton, Danielle Morton and Keli Morton Gerrits; a sister, Geraldine; and three grandchildren.

In later years, Morton, who underwent treatment for alcoholism in the mid-1980s and remained sober to the end of his life, had a second career as a designer of golf clubs.

He never abandoned songwriting. At his death, Krakow said, Morton had more than 300 songs to his credit, most unrecorded.